SIT to grill accused in TSPSC paper leak

Hyderabad, March 18 (IANS) The Special Investigation Team (SIT) investigating the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) exam paper leak on Saturday took custody of nine accused for further questioning.

A day after a city court sent the accused to police custody for six days, the SIT officials took them into their custody from Chanchalguda Central Jail.

The accused were brought to government-run Koti Hospital for medical examination and later, two key accused were taken to the TSPSC office for scene reconstruction.

The SIT officials were questioning the accused further to extract more details about the question paper leak.

The focus is on P. Praveen Kumar and A. Rajasekhara Reddy, two employees of the TSPSC. Both were suspended by the Commission after their arrest on March 13.

They had allegedly stolen question papers from a computer in the confidential section of the TSPSC and sold the same to some aspirants for Rs 10 lakh. Those arrested included a police constable who had referred some aspirants to the accused.

The paper leak came to light when TSPSC officials suspected theft of data from the computer and lodged a complaint with the police.

The TSPSC had conducted the examination on March 5 for 833 vacancies of Assistant Engineer, Municipal Assistant Engineer, Technical Officer, and Junior Technical Officer in various engineering departments. A total of 55,000 candidates had written the exam.

On March 13, police arrested nine people, including two employees of the TSPSC.

Following the arrest of the accused, the Commission cancelled the exam and also postponed other exams scheduled to be held later this month.

Amid doubts that the accused may have leaked question papers of some other exams, the Commission on Friday decided to cancel three more exams including Group I Prelims.

Nearly 2.86 lakh aspirants of Group I posts had appeared in Group-I exam conducted on October 16, 2022.

Questioning of accused by SIT assumed significance in view of the allegations that accused Rajasekhara Reddy, a network expert and a contract employee of TSPSC, is active worker of the BJP.

Leaders of ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) suspect that there is a conspiracy behind the paper leak to defame the government and create turmoil among unemployed youth appearing for various exams conducted by TSPSC to fill vacancies in government departments.

State minister K.T. Rama Rao has requested the Director General of Police to investigate the conspiracy angle.